Swisher narrates human foible and brilliance, a train-wreck tale brightened by plenty of personality—including her own, sparkling through in laugh-out-loud observations on almost every page.
-- Boston Globe

Swisher displays a finely honed hogwash detector and maps AOL’s inevitable fall with the perfect amount of cynicism and whimsy.
-- Newsday

Swisher delivers a readable account of the gigantic merger and why it didn’t work. She mixes in distinctive humor with hard-core reporting to expose a monumental exercise in ineptness.
-- Dallas Morning News

[Readers] will be entertained by Swisher’s barbed wit and carried along by her expertly constructed narrative.
-- Forbes.com

Swisher moves her narrative along swiftly and adopts a pleasingly irreverent tone...Better yet, Swisher diligently reconstructs the optimism with which many Time Warner officials (including Ted Turner) greeted the merger. The merger was not a total loss...Swisher has produced an enjoyable book about it.”
-- Washington Post

Swisher explains in her excellent new book why the merger turned out to be a rotten egg...Pony is a wickedly funny, insider-y tale...Swisher deftly paints the characters of the top executives, then exposes all the bickering and backstabbing.
-- San Francisco Weekly

Swisher has a wicked sense of humor and a keen eye for human foibles and folly.
-- Chicago Sun-Times

[An] entertaining and sharply written analysis of the fateful AOL Time Warner merger.
-- Variety.com

SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
aol.com

The New York Times, Richard Bernstein
Ms. Swisher's corporate history is well researched and comprehensive.... There is ... much to learn in Ms. Swisher's account, though it must be said that her manner of telling it is often annoyingly gimmicky, as if she were writing for people who don't actually like to read.

The San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Swartz
Swisher largely succeeds in her pledge to present the intriguing history of AOL to neither "those who abhor it (nor) those who adore it."

Business Week, Catherine Yang
The adventures of AOL contain the raw material for a riveting tale.... Swisher excels in relating the chronology of AOL's endless perils and occasional triumphs.... She provides little analysis of the corporate culture that led to the many snafus.... Still, aol.com is a faithful chronicle of the considerable surface drama of a surprising victor that continues to face down challenges....

From Booklist , Mary Whatley
With the benefit of a full round of interviews with management and employees of AOL (America Online), the author tells the fascinating story of what makes the company tick. Although not the founder, the hero of the AOL story is Steve Case, who led the company through many near-fatal disasters and hard-won victories to generate revenues of more than $1 billion by attracting some 11 million members to its online service. The tale of the ongoing competition with Bill Gates of Microsoft is particularly intriguing, with Gates telling Case in 1993 that he would either buy him or bury him; neither scenario was realized. Also, the telephone industry, which might have destroyed AOL, never became a significant threat. By early 1998, AOL was the number-one Web site accessed from homes. Although Swisher's entree into AOL management may have presented a public-relations opportunity for the company, this book, nevertheless, skillfully chronicles the extraordinary life of this organization and the creation of the online communications industry.
-- Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Kirkus Reviews , June 1, 1998
A thorough, thoughtful account of how America Online left its status as a lark to become the much-maligned but presently undisputed king of online services. Swisher, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was given unprecedented access to AOL head Steve Case for her book, and it is from Case and other inside sources that she's gotten much of her material. She records, for instance, a 1993 confrontation between Case and Microsoft head Bill Gates, wherein Gates tells Case, ``I can buy 20 percent of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into business myself and bury you.'' Gates's cockiness backfires in this instance, as he never is able to either acquire any significant portion of AOL or get his own Microsoft Network to attract much of AOL's audience. Case's battle with Gates is summed up well in Case's own argument that Microsoft's Windows platform had become to PC users what the dial tone is to the telephone--a minimum basic requirement for usage. For Gates to exert undue control over this computer ``dial tone,'' Case was able to argue successfully, would be an unfair advantage. Still, Case has to battle over the course of Swisher's chronicle with his own users over the service's charges (he eventually settles on a flat rate of $19.95 per month, but not without taking serious losses along the way); and with the government and its Communications Decency Act, which AOL's lawyers were instrumental in fighting in federal court. He also has to contend with the issue of sex on the Internet, knowing well that much of AOL's revenue is based on cybersex and other forms of adult entertainment. Swisher never sensationalizes these hot topics. Her book is a solid study of the birth, growth, and struggles of this computer giant.
-- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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